


Haunted by the Devil

by kowaiyoukai



Category: Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Carnival, Fluff and Humor, Foggy finds out, Fortune Telling, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Love Confessions, M/M, Matt Murdock Needs a Hug, Pre-Slash, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-13 05:06:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29771097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kowaiyoukai/pseuds/kowaiyoukai
Summary: Foggy just wants to spend a fun day at the carnival. He doesn't think getting his fortune told could lead to so much drama.
Relationships: Matt Murdock/Franklin "Foggy" Nelson
Comments: 7
Kudos: 40
Collections: MattFoggy Server Telephone Game Event





	Haunted by the Devil

**Author's Note:**

> Written as part of the Avocados in Love Telephone Game challenge! I have an unhealthy love of the magic-based characters in Marvel, which is the real reason both Wanda and Illyana appear in AU forms in this fic. Also this very angsty title is in no way appropriate for this story.

“But what does that _mean_?” Foggy’s voice squeaked up a notch as it did when he was confronted with any concept of a supernatural ageless evil entity consuming his life.

The fortune-teller stared at him, her long red hair falling prettily around her shoulders. It gave him something to admire even though she was clearly judging his competence. “What does… _what_ mean?”

“Haunted by the devil,” Foggy repeated, unhappily. “Is that, like, a metaphor?”

“No,” she snapped. “I don’t deal in metaphors, Franklin.”

Foggy couldn’t help it. He slowly looked up at the sign hanging above her head: The Scarlet Witch—Fortune-Teller Extraordinaire.

“So is the Scarlet part about your hair or your outfit?” He shrugged. “I gotta say, at first I thought it was a throwback to the Scarlet Letter, but then I thought that would be ridiculous, right? But is it worse for it to just be the color of your outfit?” He paused. “What if it’s laundry day? You still gotta work, right?”

The woman’s eyes seemed to bore into his soul. “You’ve already let the Devil into your heart,” she remarked, her vaguely European accent growing harsher with her criticism. “Do not blame me for your own poor judgment.”

Foggy stood up suddenly, pushing the chair back with a scratchy sound that felt mildly appropriate as a sign of his slight anger. “Fine!” he shouted. “I won’t!”

He huffed out of the tent as the woman pocketed his ten dollars. Well, he’d already known fortune-telling was fake, but it seemed like a huge waste of ten bucks that he could’ve spent on a ton of cotton candy or an overly expensive funnel cake.

Matt was waiting outside, his expression shifting between guilt and poorly faked innocence. “Done already?” he asked, gesturing with his elbow towards the tent that proclaimed in large red letters ‘SEE INTO THE FUTURE -- $10 A VISION’.

“Yeah.” Foggy sounded bummed out. “It’s like you said, all this fortune-telling stuff is bullshit.”

“Mm. Wanna do something else?”

They walked away from the woman who told Foggy he was ‘haunted by the devil’—whatever that meant—and instead went through the main fairgrounds, casually strolling as Foggy narrated the scene for Matt.

“There’s three women in a fight-to-the-death over this huge stuffed penguin. Seems like they’re scrounging in their purses for any loose change to get another shot at throwing this bean bag in the hole marked for the grand prize. I can’t believe they’re falling for it. Oh! A guy and his kids just got off a ride called Tumbler-Twister. It’s kind of like this long oval-shaped seat that fits like four or five people and then these long metal spokes connect a bunch of them to this middle twirly thing. Then it, like, spins around super fast. I guess it’s to make people really dizzy? There’s a caricaturist who’s drawing this one teenager as an astronaut. A bunch of kids are in line for a face-painter. And there’s—” Foggy cut himself off. “Well, never mind.”

Matt blew out a breath. “Really, Fogs?”

Foggy sighed, too. “It’s a tarot reader.” He groaned. “I know I just had bad luck with the fortune-teller, but maybe tarot will be better for me today?”

Matt pressed his lips together. “That’s up to you, man. It’s your money to burn.”

“You couldn’t be more correct, my friend. Let’s go explore the magical world of pretty art on cards.”

Foggy tugged on Matt’s arm, dragging him along until they were both standing next to a table with a girl seated shuffling a stack of cards. Dropping Matt’s arm, Foggy eagerly waved at her.

“Hello! How much for—”

“Ten dollars.” The girl had nearly alabaster white skin and long, straight blonde hair. There was a small stuffed purple dragon sitting on the table next to her. She seemed to be in her late teens or early twenties—which kind of made Foggy wonder how much experience she had in the industry, but, then again, she was working in a carnival. They most likely didn’t have the strictest hiring practices.

“Wow, there’s a lot of white yet generally Eastern European people in the fortune-telling business in this carnival,” Foggy commented.

“I’m Russian,” the girl said.

“I’m Foggy!” He sat down in the seat across from her, placing another ten dollar bill on the table. 

“If your friend wants a reading, that’s another ten dollars.”

“Oh, he’s not—”

“Your friend?” she asked. “Boyfriend, then. My apologies.”

“Oh, no,” Foggy stammered just as Matt turned extremely red, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and shuffled awkwardly in place like the oddball orphan duckling he was. “We’re friends, like, _super_ good friends, it’s just, you know, he’s not interested in fortune-telling type of stuff.”

The girl smiled politely. “I don’t care.”

“Cool,” Foggy replied with a nervous laugh. “Cool, cool, cool.”

“I’ll do a basic reading,” she stated. “Past, present, future.” She shuffled the cards a few more times before handing the deck to Foggy. “Shuffle them as much or as little as you want.”

Foggy held up the deck and narrowed his eyes, inspecting it critically. “How do I know how much is a good amount?”

The girl blinked at him. “Use your instinct.”

He took a deep breath and began shuffling, deciding to just spell out Matt’s full name in his head and stop when he reached the k. Then he found himself just thinking about Matt. Well. It’s not like he could _help_ it. He thought about Matt more than he thought about basically anything else.

In fact, he glanced up and over to see Matt’s head tilted towards him, as if he was listening to something with interest. Foggy felt his heart beat faster, unable to control his feelings for Matt even after all these years. He shook his head. No need to get sucked down that hole right now. He was supposed to be focusing on these cards, wasn’t he?

In a moment, Foggy looked up and noticed the girl roll her eyes towards the purple dragon toy, as if she was sharing some kind of secret frustration with him. Maybe being eccentric was just part of the job?

“Here,” Foggy said, feeling like he’d better hand the deck over already.

The girl took it back and cleared her throat. “Now, it’s time for the spread. I’ll do the full reading at the end.” She flipped the first card over—it showed a man with some long sticks in the background.

“Why does he have so many sticks?” Foggy asked.

“It’s the Nine of Wands,” the girl explained. “Upright it means courage, persistence, resilience, and test of faith. But yours is reversed.”

Foggy looked confused. “Does that… matter?”

The girl sighed. “Yes. Reversed is when it’s upside-down. That means this symbolizes being on edge, defensive, hesitant, or paranoid.”

Foggy’s brow furrowed. “And that’s… my past?”

The girl nodded.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Matt made a strangled noise from the side, but Foggy ignored him. Sometimes Matt made weird noises. Foggy figured it was a blind thing.

“Sometimes the cards can be difficult to read,” she replied. “The full reading might make more sense at the end. This is your present.” The girl flipped over a card, showing the face of Justice facing her—upside down from Foggy’s perspective.

“Justice!” Foggy beamed. “That makes perfect sense. We’re lawyers.” He gestured between himself and Matt.

“The Justice card represents balance, equilibrium, cause and effect, fairness, responsibility, and, obviously justice,” she intoned.

“Perfect!”

“When it’s upright,” she continued. “But yours is flipped. As a reversed card, it means dishonesty, imbalance, lack of accountability, legal flaws, and unfair treatment.”

Foggy looked like he swallowed a sour lemon. His lips were puckered yet sucked in so thin, he could feel his skin stretching to match his discomfort. “Maybe I shuffled it wrong?”

Matt seemed to choke on nothing.

“Hm.” She looked doubtful. “Let’s just continue.”

Foggy nodded, carefully not looking at Matt’s reaction to the not-so-great reading.

“This one shows your future.” She turned over the final card. It was the Devil.

“Of course,” Foggy muttered, unsurprised on a soul-deep level.

“Normally this card does not mean the actual devil,” she explained.

“Oh.” Foggy sounded relieved.

“But in your case, it does.” She shrugged. “I can’t explain why, but this does mean the actual devil.”

“Oh.” Foggy no longer sounded relieved.

“What do you think?” the girl asked, turning to look at her stuffed dragon. After a few seconds, she made a face. “ _Really_?” She shrugged. “If you say so.” She looked back up at Foggy. “Lockheed thinks it’s a metaphor.”

Foggy groaned. “I just asked the red lady and she said the devil _wasn’t_ a metaphor!”

The girl pursed her lips. “In my professional opinion, this spread tells a story of a boy who grew up in a situation where he had to fight his way through adversity.”

Foggy nodded, used to being ignored by people who went on long rants about theories they had. He was friends with Matt, after all.

“Instead of rising to the challenge, he fell into a defensive mental state that led to him being deeply mistrustful of others. As his life progressed, he fell into relying on lies and shirking responsibility when he judged something else was more important. This worked for him for a time. And it will continue to work for a little bit longer. But, soon enough, he’s going to have to deal with this Devil figure.” She tapped her fingers on the table. “I suspect this figure has influenced his life in a way that is related to his inability to honestly relate to the people around him due to issues from his childhood.”

Foggy blinked. “I mean… that doesn’t sound like me at all, but wow, you should be a therapist!”

The girl smiled. “Thanks! We’re considering it.”

“It was totally wrong, but I definitely got my ten bucks worth.” Foggy stood up, looked over at Matt, and frowned. “You okay, buddy?”

Matt looked deathly pale. “I’m… not feeling well,” he stated.

Foggy immediately hurried over and took hold of his arm. “Matty! Why didn’t you say anything?” He began leading Matt away from the tarot card reader’s table, and the carnival in general, heading back to the subway. “Let’s go back to my place, okay? You can lay on the couch like a movie star recovering from a feinting spell.”

A burst of laughter bubbled up out of Matt despite his otherwise upset temperament. Foggy felt satisfied.

That satisfaction only lasted so long, however. Once they returned to Foggy’s apartment, Matt began pacing back and forth, twisting his cane back and forth between his tightened knuckles. This actually was pretty familiar patented Matthew Michael Murdock behavior. Foggy wasn’t that concerned. He’d spent many years dealing with Matt’s angst. Still, Matt had said he felt sick, and that had Foggy looking through his cabinets.

“You want chicken soup?” Foggy called back to his partner-in-nearly-everything wearing down his living room rug. “I’ve got a fuckton of Campbell’s. It was just the Can Can sale.”

“Fog.” Matt’s voice sounded strangled. It made Foggy straighten up and look back to see Matt. “I need to tell you something.”

“O… kay?” Foggy closed the cabinet and went to sit on the couch. “What’s up, buddy?”

“I think.” He stopped to grit his teeth. “No, I’m sure that tarot reading was right.”

Foggy snorted. “I don’t think so, man. I don’t have any kind of long-term trauma that I’ve been—” He stopped short. “Oh.”

Matt cleared his throat. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“You know I love hearing your stories,” Foggy replied. “Let me make hot chocolate. I’ve even got some of those tiny marshmallows. It’ll be awesome.”

So as Foggy put on water to boil and decided between milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and extra dark 60% cocoa chocolate, Matt began to tell him about his dad’s history with refusing to throw a game, going to live in an extremely hard-line Catholic orphanage, and training with a man named Stick who enjoyed beating kids because he was in a cult—throughout all of which Matt was dealing with super-senses that meant he could gather more information than the average sighted person.

Foggy was quite good at maintaining his chill, but even he had to hold back several exclamations. The thing was that Matt very rarely shared anything personal about himself from before they had met in college. And Foggy wasn’t exactly okay with that—he had thought they were close enough to warrant some childhood stories—but at least now he knew why Matt was so closed-off about his past.

Then they got to the part about Matt going out at night to beat people up.

Foggy let out a quiet, “You’ve got to be fucking _kidding_ me.”

Matt put his mug of hot chocolate down on the coffee table. “I know, I’m sorry, I never meant to—”

“All this Devil shit today was because of _you_?” Foggy laughed, relieved, as he put up a hand to his chest. “I thought I was cursed!”

Matt bit his lower lip. “I know you don’t like Daredevil.”

Foggy’s laughter trickled off. “True,” he stated. “Counterpoint. I love _you_.”

Matt swallowed. “Foggy… there’s something else.”

“Oh no,” Foggy said with a trill of nervous humor in his voice. “There’s more.”

“I’ve struggled with this for a long time,” Matt murmured. “And I just think.” He stopped abruptly.

“What, Matty?”

The silence stretched out a bit. Foggy left it alone. He drank the end of his hot chocolate. Picking up both of the empty mugs, he brought them into the kitchen and quickly washed them. After he returned them to the cupboard, the only thing to do was sit back down and give Matt the space he needed to say whatever was on his mind.

In another minute or so, Matt took a deep breath. “I love you.”

Matt never said that. Foggy’s heart panged so hard it hurt. He wanted it to mean something else, but he knew how Matt intended it, and it would be unfair and incredibly mean for Foggy to force that conversation on his best friend right now, after he’d bared his soul and all its’ painful holes.

“I love you, too, buddy,” Foggy said with a small smile.

Matt groaned, frustrated. “No, Foggy. I’m—” His teeth clicked shut.

Foggy’s breath caught. “Matt… What exactly are you trying to say?”

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way,” Matt continued, nearly mumbling at this point. “I don’t expect you to. I just… I wanted you to know.” He shook his head, far too dejected for Foggy’s poor infatuated heart to take. “That’s all.”

And then he hurled himself across the room and jumped out the fucking window.

“Matt!” Foggy shouted. “Matthew! You complete _idiot_!”

A pounding on the wall informed Foggy his neighbors were also currently having a problem with their own idiot.

Foggy threw his hands up in the air, hissing under his breath, “We are going to have a _discussion_ about this, Murdock. In the morning.”

In the meantime, Foggy was going to attempt to get some rest as his brain worked overtime trying to figure out how to convince his guilt-stricken trauma-ravaged best friend slash love at first sight that their feelings were mutually reciprocated and, apparently, truly long overdue for being acted upon.


End file.
